Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T05:18:42.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Border Zone Trade and the Economic Boundaries of the State in North-East Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2023

Abstract

Focusing on the tri-juncture of Ghana, Togo and Burkina Faso, this article examines the role of cross-border traders in the construction and redefinition of international boundaries. Through the study of the social and spatial patterning of trade surrounding three commodities–imported cloth, beans and shea butter (karite)—it explores the multiple ways the border is endowed with or deprived of significance. When the border is viewed as a socio-geographic region the importance of popular practice to the on-going constitution of state power and presence becomes evident.

Résumé

Cet article examine, dans la zone de jonction entre le Ghana, le Togo et le Burkina Faso, le rôle des commerçants transfrontaliers dans la construction et la redefinition des frontières internationales. A travers l'étude des modèles sociaux et spatiaux des échanges commerciaux de trois marchandises, à savoir le tissu, le haricot et le beurre de karité, il étudie les aspects multiples de l'importance ou de l'insignifiance que revêt la frontière. Lorsque la frontière est considérée comme une région sociogéographique, l'importance de la pratique populaire quant à la constitution continuelle du pouvoir et de la présence étatiques devient manifeste.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Agboola, S. A. 1979.An Agricultural Atlas of Nigeria. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: the origins and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. 1986. ‘Introduction’ in Arjun Appadurai, (ed.), The Social Life of Things, pp. 363. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arhin, K. 1974. The Papers of George Ekem Ferguson. African Social Research Documents 7. Leiden: Afrika-Studiecentrum.Google Scholar
Asara, 1999. Article on the cedi, West Africa, December.Google Scholar
Azarya, , V., and Chazan, N. 1987. ‘Disengagement from the state in Africa: reflections on the experience of Ghana and Guinea’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 29 (1), 107–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bening, R. 1973.‘Indigenous concepts of boundaries and significance of administrative stations and boundaries in northern Ghana’, Bulletin of the Ghana Geographical Association 15, 121.Google Scholar
Buabeng, C. S. 1999. ‘Duffour redeems Bank of Ghana’, West Africa 4205, 233.Google Scholar
Chalfin, B. 1996. ‘Market reforms and the state: the case of shea in Ghana’, Fournal of Modern African Studies 34 (3), 421–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalfin, B. 1998.‘Contingent Conjunctures: market reforms, the state and rural women's livelihoods in northeastern Ghana.’ Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Chalfin, B. 1999. ‘The changing face of “One-mouth”: household labor and commercial intensification in northern Ghana’, in David Small, and Nicola Tannenbaum, (eds), At the Interface: the household and beyond, Society for Economic Anthropology annual proceedings, Lanham MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Chalfin, B. 2000. ‘Remaking the State: female traders in a West African borderland’. Paper presented at the Anthropology Department Colloquium, University of Colorado, Denver, 3 March.Google Scholar
Clark, G. (ed.).1989.Traders versus the State: anthropological approaches to unofficial economies. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Cordell, D. Gregory, J., and Piche, V. 1996. Hoe and Wage: a social history of a circular migration system in West Africa. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Curtin, P. 1984. Cross-cultural Trade in World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delcalo, S. 1987. Historical Dictionary of Togo. Second edition, Metuchen NJ: Scarecrow Press.Google Scholar
Donnan, H., and Wilson, T. 1999. Boundaries of Identity, Nation and State. London: Berg.Google Scholar
Drucker-Brown, S. 1988/89. ‘Local wars in northern Ghana’, Cambridge Studies in Anthropology 13, 86106.Google Scholar
Dumett, , R., and Johnson, M. 1988. ‘Britain and the supression of slavery in the Gold Coast Colony, Asanti, and the Northern Territories’, in Suzanne Miers, and Richard Roberts, (eds), The End of Slavery in Africa, pp. 71–118. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Ellis, , S., and Mac Gaffey, J. 1996. ‘Research on sub-Saharan Africa's unrecorded internationaltrade: some methodological and conceptual problems’, African Studies Review 39 (2), 1942.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Englebert, P. 1996. Burkina Faso: unsteady statehood in West Africa. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Fatton, R. 1995. ‘Africa in the Age of Democratization: the civic limits of civil society’, African Studies Review 38 (2), 6799.Google Scholar
Flynn, D. 1997. ‘We are the border: identity, exchange and the state along the Benin–Nigeria border’, American Ethnologist 24 (2), 311–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortes, M. 1945. The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Fortes, M. and S., 1936. ‘Food in the domestic economy of the Tallensi’, Africa 9 (2), 237–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gell, A. 1982. ‘The market wheel: symbolic aspects of an Indian tribal market’, Man 17, 470–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goody, J. 1967. The Social Organisation of the Lo Willi. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute..Google Scholar
Gupta, A. 1995. ‘Blurred boundaries: the discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state’, American Ethnologist 22 (2), 375402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, K. 1978. ‘The economic basis of Tallensi social history in the early twentieth century’, in George Dalton, (ed.), Research in Economic Anthropology, pp. 185–216. Greenwich: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Herbst, J. 1993. The Politics of Reform in Ghana, 1982–91. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hodgkinson, E. 2000. ‘Burkina Faso—economy’, in African South of the Sahara 2000. London: Europa.Google Scholar
Huq, M. M. 1989. The Economy of Ghana: the first twenty-five years since independence. New York: St. Martin's Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Igue, J., and Soule, B. 1992. L'Etat entrepôt au Benin: commerce informel ou solution à la crise? Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Iliasu, A. A. 1975. ‘The establishment of British administration in Mamprugu (Mamprusi), 1898–1937’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 16, 128.Google Scholar
International Monetary Fund. 1970. Surveys of African Economies III. Washington DC: IMF.Google Scholar
Kjellstrom, S., and d'Almeida, A. 1987. Institutional Development and Technical Assistance in Macroeconomic Policy Formulation: a case study of Togo. Washington DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Knoll, A. 1978. Togo under Imperial Germany, 1884–1914. Stanford CA: Hoover Institution Press.Google Scholar
Konigs, P. 1986. The State and Rural Class Formation in Ghana: a comparative analysis. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kratochwil, F. 1986. ‘Of systems, boundaries and territoriality’, World Politics 34, 2752.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraus, J. 1991. ‘The political economy of stabilization and structural adjustment in Ghana’, in Donald Rothchild, (ed.), Ghana: the political economy of recovery, pp. 119–56. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Ladoucer, P. 1979. Chiefs and Politicians: the politics of regionalism in northern Ghana. London: Longman.Google Scholar
MacGaffey, J., with Mukohya, V., wa Nkera, R., Schoepf, B., ma Mavambu Ye Beda, M., and Walu Engundu, W., 1991. The Real Economy of Zaire. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Manoukian, M. 1951. Tribes of the Northern Territories. London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Martinez, O. 1994. Border People: life and society in the US-Mexico borderlands. Tucson AZ: University of Arizona Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKim, W. 1972.‘The periodic market system in northeastern Ghana’, Economic Geography 48 (3), 333–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metcalfe, G. E. 1964. Great Britain and Ghana: documents on Ghana history. London: Nelson.Google Scholar
Northcott, H. P. 1899.The Northern Territories of the Gold Coast. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Nugent, P. 1991. ‘Educating Rawlings: the evolution of government strategy towards smuggling’, in Donald Rothchild, (ed.), Ghana: the political economy of recovery, pp. 69–84. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Nugent, P. 1995. Big Men, Small Boys and Politics in Ghana. London: Pinter.Google Scholar
Nugent, P., and Asiwaju, A. I. (eds). 1996. African Boundaries: barriers, conduits and opportunities. London: Pinter.Google Scholar
Ortner, S. 1995. ‘Resistance and the problem of ethnographic refusal’, Comparative Studies of Society and History 37 (1), 173–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peiler, Elke. 1994. ‘Potentials and Constraints of Agroforestry in Northern Ghana on the Example of Farmed Parkland in the vicinity of Nyankpala Agricultural Experiment Station with special reference to the Impact of Butyrospermum Parkii and Parkia Biglobosa.’ Unpublished MS.Google Scholar
Piot, C. 1999. Remotely Global: village modernity in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prescott, J. R. V. 1987. Political Frontiers and Boundaries. London: Un win Hyman.Google Scholar
Reno, W. 1998. Warlord Politics and African States. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rimmer, D. 1984. The Economies of West Africa. New York: St Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Rimmer, D. 1992. Staying Poor: Ghana's political economy, 1950-90. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Roncoli, M. 1994. ‘Managing on the Margins: agricultural production and household reproduction in northeastern Ghana’. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Binghamton.Google Scholar
Saul, M. 1987. ‘The organization of a West African grain market’, American Anthropologist 89 (1), 7495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schatzberg, M. 1988. The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaire. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing like a State: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shepherd, A. 1979. ‘Agrarian change in northern Ghana’, in Heyer, Judith Roberts, Pepe and Williams, Gavin (eds), Rural Development in Tropical Africa, pp. 168-92. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sutton, I. 1989.‘Colonial agricultural policy: the non-development of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast’, International Fournal of African Historical Studies 22 (4), 637–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
US State Department 1999. Togo. www.state.gov.background_notes/togo Google Scholar